Faux Punch Label Tutorial

On Sunday I shared my Monogram Embroidery Hoop wall art which included a homemade punch label. Today I’m going to give you a quick tutorial on how to make these punch labels yourself!

Here is what we are going to make:

For this project you will need:

cardstock (I usually grab some from my scraps)

embossing stylus

pencil

mousepad

scissors

and, of course, the punch label font on your computer!

First off, download the font you need. I used the Impact Label font available on dafont.com. The Impact Label font is great because the designer of this font has made it available in white on black AND black on white so you have a bit of variety. (For complete instructions about installing fonts on your computer please see the bottom of this post.)

Type up what you want to say using your punch label font in Word or your favorite drawing program, size it to fit your project, and print it on cardstock.

You can see from the various angles of the above photos that the font gives a fairly good illusion of being 3D already, but if you look at it closely you can see that it is flat. Embossing the image will give it that extra texture.

Hold your printed sheet of cardstock up to a window so that the printed side is facing away from you. You will be able to see the letters through the paper. Trace them with a pencil.

For the next step you will need an embossing stylus. You can find them at your local hobby store for just a couple of dollars. Its difficult to tell, but each end of the stylus has a different size tip. You want to use the smallest tip (the bottom left image in the above photo).

Put your cardstock printed-side-down on the back of a mousepad and begin embossing your letters by tracing over your pencil marks with the stylus. You will probably want to go over each letter 5 or 6 times depending on how much pressure you are applying. Once you get a feel for what you are doing it will start to go faster. *What you don’t want to do is trace the letter so many times that you tear the cardstock.*

{Need a mousepad? I know where you can get some super cute ones with a scrapbook theme!! *wink, wink* I have some in my shoppe. Click here!}

When you are finished embossing, cut your labels into strips. You can see from the above images that the embossing has given the labels that extra texture we were looking for.

2. On that webpage there is a button to the right that says Download. Click it.

3. A window will pop up asking if you want to Open or Save the file. Save it.

(Note: I save fonts to my desktop so I can find them quickly.)

4. The file you just saved is zipped. You probably already have a program on your computer that will unzip the file. With your mouse, right click on the zipped file and hover your mouse over the unzip program (probably called WinZip). Another menu should appear that will include a command to Extract Here. Click on Extract Here. The files contained in the zipped file will appear on your desktop.

(Note: If for some reason you do not have an unzip program on your computer, worry not! There are several available for free download on the internet. Even WinZip has a free trial version. Here are a few you can try: WinZip, PeaZip, ZipIt)

5. You should now have 4 new files on your desktop. Two of these are .tff files which are the font files. You need to put these files into your fonts folder. To find your fonts folder double click on the icon on your desktop that says My Computer. From there follow this path: My Computer -> :C drive -> Windows folder. In the Windows folder is an alphabetized list of more folders. One of those is your fonts folder. Drag and drop the two .tff files on your desktop into the fonts folder.

6. For the fonts to work properly you will most likely need to restart your computer.

7. Once your computer reboots, find and use the fonts in Word or your drawing program. If they are there and you can use them, you can go back to your desktop and delete the extra files that were extracted from the zipped file. You can also delete the zip file.

(Note: One of the extra files that was left on your desktop was a text file which is a message from the author of the fonts. It basically says that you are free to use his fonts however you see fit. He does provide a link to make a donation to him for providing the font which you can do if you want to. Its always a good idea to read these text files to see if the author has any stipulations to your using his/her font. Most all are free for personal use which is all many of you will want them for.)

I have started truncating my posts to avoid having my content stolen. I hope you’ll click over to finish reading the post. Thank you for understanding!

Great idea, now I know what to do when I’m working on a project and run out of tape for my lable maker. Plus I think it would be fun to run this off on colored cardstock to make “tape” that matches your project. Tape for a label maker only comes in so many colors.

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